The 29th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival Award Winners are now posted on our site. See who won the 2011 Comcast Narrative Competition, the 2011 Documentary Competition, the 2011 Verizon Audience Awards, and the new 2011 Loni Ding Award in Social Issue Documentary.

For my last evening in dreamy San Francisco, I decided to expose myself to as many artists’ work as possible. I went to see TAINTED LOVE and SILENT RITUALS AND HOVERING PROXIES back-to-back – two collections of shorts offered by SFIAAFF.

The weekend wrap up of the 29th annual SFIAAFF in San Jose had a great turn=out despite the rainy weather overhead! Many films were screened in the South Bay at Camera 12 theaters such as MADE IN INDIA, WHEN LOVE COMES, SURROGATE VALENTINE and BREAK UP CLUB.

First things first: I am a hopeless romantic. I swoon at musicals, clutch my heart during quirky rom-coms, break out the tissues during tear-jerking scenes. That said, I accidentally-on-purpose chose to back-to-back, love-themed screenings: TAINTED LOVE (the cleverly named shorts program) and SURROGATE VALENTINE (the closing night film).

FutureStates is rare; public television rarely ever ventures into the genre of science-fiction, let alone sci-fi as social commentary (the program is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting). Political and universal issues are being explored, such as global warming, refugees, the gay gene, and family.

SURROGATE VALENTINE is the SFIAAFF Closing Night film for San Francisco. Bay Area music stalwart Goh Nakamura plays “Goh,” a low-key indie rocker on tour with a sycophantic Hollywood actor. When he reconnects with a longtime friend (Lynn Chen), he is forced to make some bold decisions about his life. From the director of WHITE ON RICE.